MEDICAL BOARD LATEST STATE AGENCY MIRED IN SCANDAL

The recent trend of East Coast pundits proclaiming that tax hikes have fixed California isn’t just bewildering because of all the fundamental problems with our state government these distant observers choose to ignore. It’s also because Californians have been beset with one headline after another in recent times involving scandal and dysfunction at state agencies.

The latest involves the Medical Board of California, the agency in charge of overseeing the state’s 100,000-plus physicians. Three years ago, the Orange County Register published a scathing expose of the board, detailing how doctors were routinely given slaps on the wrist for serious offenses in contradiction of the board’s own guidelines. In November, a Los Angeles Times investigation found that more than 70 doctors with a habit of freely prescribing powerful painkillers were linked to nearly 300 overdose deaths around the state, a deadly pattern that regulators were slow to notice and address.

This may seem extreme, but in our view it is appropriate. The Medical Board of California appears uninterested in adequately protecting the public and indifferent to criticism. It may take an existential threat to end this unacceptable status quo.